More bad news for Toyota
Updated
Having announced the recall of eight million vehicles around the globe because of faulty accelerators, the world's biggest car-maker Toyota has hit more pot-holes. The Japanese Government is ordering the company to investigate dozens of complaints about brake failures involving its pioneering Prius hybrid. Drivers in the United States and Japan have reported that on bumpy roads the brakes on the Prius can temporarily malfunction.
Presenter: Mark Willacy, North Asia correspondent
Speaker: Shinichi Sasaki, vice president, Toyota; Seiji Maehara, Japan's Transport Minister
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WILLACY: It's almost a source of national embarrassment. In Japan the media is faithfully replaying all the bad press Toyota's attracting in the United States over its recall of millions of cars.
SASAKI: (JAPANESE)
WILLACY: Acknowledging that Toyota has been a trifle slow in responding to concerns over sticky accelerators in the US, the company's vice-president Shinichi Sasaki apologised for making customers uneasy. "The size of the problem we have caused our customers is unprecedented" he says. And Toyota's problems are getting bigger by the day. Overnight Japan's transport ministry ordered the world's leading carmaker to investigate complaints about the latest model of its pioneering Prius hybrid. More than 100 people in Japan and the US have reported experiencing temporary brake failure, mainly at low speed on bumpy or slippery roads. There have been several reported accidents. One left two people slightly injured.
WITNESS: (JAPANESE)
WILLACY: "It was a pile up involving four cars" says this witness "the Prius slammed into the back of the other cars" he says. "The driver in that accident reported that he hit the brakes but that the car didn't respond." The latest model Prius is Toyota's biggest selling car in Japan. It's seen as the company's flagship, the key to its future. But now Toyota faces the very real threat that its pioneering hybrid could also be recalled.
MAEHARA: (JAPANESE)
WILLACY: "The ministry will launch its own investigation into this brake problem" says Japan's Transport Minister Seiji Maehara. "We will then decide whether to order a recall" he says. The popularity of the Prius has been the one bright spot in an otherwise difficult 12 months for Toyota. The last thing the company needs now is the reputation of its revolutionary hybrid sullied by a recall.
